Kenya Institute of Supplies Management (KISM) has operationalised the North Rift members regional chapter to ensure professionalism of the practitioners in the area of procurement and supply chain management.
Speaking during the Regional Members Forum held in Eldoret that involved North rift chapter members from across the eight counties in the region; Elgeyo Marakwet, Nandi, Uasin Gishu, Trans Nzoia, West Pokot, Baringo, Samburu and Turkana, KISM Chairman, John Karani pointed out that the reason for the initiative is decentralising and devolving KISM services as an institute to the regional chapters formed alongside the original provinces.
“We are here today for a landmark occasion where we are launching the regional Chapter of the North rift region. The idea is how can we bring about professionalisation of the people called procurement and supply chain professionals, closer to the people,” noted the KISM Chairman.
He revealed that Many of the institutions have reported that about 70 percent of their budget is spent on procurement, noting that they can get value for the money spent for procurement through capacitating the practitioners in the field of procurement and supply chain management.
“We want to come here and make our services more locally available or affordable in terms of capacitating our members in terms of reaching out to people doing this kind of procurement to ensure they are bonafide, registered and qualified people,” said Karani.
“We have people coming from across North Rift to operationalise this chapter which is a landmark occasion of amplifying our presence of devolving our services to our members and stakeholders,” he explained.
He further indicated that, Procurement is a multi-disciplinary occasion, and they are doing sensitisation on segregation of duties, sensitising the user department people who eventually consume those services to understand their role in that chain, understand procurement regulations and processes in order to avert any irregularities that would bring about legal suits.
In his remarks, KISM’s the Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Kenneth Matiba indicated that the institute is a statutory and regulatory body registered pursuant to the provisions of the Supplies Practitioners Management Act 2007, with the mandate of training, registering, licensing, disciplining and also regulating the supply chain management profession in the country
“That is a very unique position in the promotion of governance in the country and that is why in the recent past we embarked on the process of ensuring and enforcing compliance,” he said.
He cautioned the members of the public and all stakeholders that they are not allowed to practice in the space of procurement and supply chain management if they are not registered by the institute and also duly licensed to practice.
“That is how we believe we can be able to make progress as a country and we are encouraging employers to ensure that the people that they employ in those functions are vetted, registered by the institute and are in good standing,” noted the CEO.
He hinted that they have also gone ahead to build the capacity of the institute’s disciplinary committee to handle matters of professional misconduct, as they are urging stakeholders to refer matters of professional misconduct to the institute which now has the capacity to handle matters adequately that are relating to the members.
Noting key challenges experienced in the past around the capacity to discharge their mandate in terms of the human resources, Matiba explained that, the council has recruited a substantive human resource and also enhanced the capacity of the institute to discharge its obligations.
“We have also had challenges in terms of weak legal framework but that has been progressively addressed and we believe that with concerted efforts, adopting a unified approach work with both state and non-state actors so that we adopt a whole society approach when it comes to dealing with matters of governance,” alluded Matiba.
The KISM CEO affirmed that they are embarking on a robust journey of sensitising stakeholders, members and also development partners and employers to come on board in order to support initiatives that are aimed at promotion of good governance in area of procurement and supply chain management
By Ekuwam Sylvester
